{"id":3008,"date":"2024-04-18T23:01:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-19T03:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3008"},"modified":"2024-04-18T23:09:39","modified_gmt":"2024-04-19T03:09:39","slug":"mahler-on-solo-trombone-coming-up-at-colorado-mahlerfest-this-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/04\/mahler-on-solo-trombone-coming-up-at-colorado-mahlerfest-this-may.html","title":{"rendered":"Mahler on Solo Trombone &#8212; Coming Up at Colorado Mahlerfest This May"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Der Doppelganger\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/930533416?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">David Taylor and JH perform Schubert&#8217;s &#8220;Der Doppelganger&#8221; at the 2023 Brevard Music Festival<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Writing in&nbsp;<em>The American Scholar<\/em>, Sudip Bose said of David Taylor playing Schubert\u2019s \u201cDer Doppelg\u00e4nger\u201d: \u201cNot in my wildest imaginings could I have envisioned such revelatory and shocking interpretations. . . . The pathos was unrelenting, almost too much to bear. . . . Taylor\u2019s Schubert performances have been haunting me ever since. I cannot get them out of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was I who introduced David Taylor to \u201cDoppelg\u00e4nger.\u201d I have often partnered his unpredictable renditions of this and other late Schubert songs. Our Mahler\/Schubert concoction, \u201c<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/08\/schubert-lieder-on-the-trombone-continued.html\">Einsamkeit<\/a>,<\/strong>\u201d has been heard in New York and at the Brevard Music Festival. We\u2019re now working up a version of Schubert\u2019s ruthlessly despondent song cycle\u00a0<em>Winterreise<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trek from late Schubert to Mahler is short and turbulent. Hence:&nbsp;<em>Mahlerei<\/em>, my concertino for bass trombone and chamber orchestra, created for Taylor and premiered at the Kennedy Center in 2022. A revised version, abetted by Daniel Schnyder, will be performed at Boulder\u2019s ever- ambitious Colorado Mahlerfest on May 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019ve taken the Scherzo from Mahler\u2019s Fourth Symphony and turned it into a kind of Yiddish chant, with the melodic line \u2013 which Mahler shares generously \u2013 piled onto Taylor\u2019s horn as a bumptious moto perpetuo. There are sundry surprises along the way. And I must say: it works. (The&nbsp;<em>Washington Post<\/em>&nbsp;called it &#8220;a strange and strangely satisfying experiment.&#8221;)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year\u2019s 37th annual Colorado Mahlerfest explores two relationships: Mahler and Schubert; Mahler and Richard Strauss. There are six concerts, a symposium, and a mountain hike. The repertoire includes Schubert\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Death and the Maiden<\/em>&nbsp;Quartet (adapted by Mahler), Mahler\u2019s Fourth Symphony, and Strauss\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Alpine<\/em>&nbsp;Symphony.&nbsp;<em>Mahlerei<\/em>&nbsp;kicks off the festival on a program otherwise mainly exploring childhood, with music by Schubert, Wagner, Humperdinck, Mahler, and Richard Strauss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I call my symposium talk, on Schubert and Mahler, \u201cTaverns in Heaven\u201d \u2013 a reference to the intrusion of a Bierhaus zither midway through the sublime Andante of Schubert\u2019s E-flat minor Klavierstuck (which I am eager to perform). I\u2019ll also be examining Mahler\u2019s annotated Vienna and New York scores for Schubert\u2019s Ninth, which (on the podium) he turned into something utterly and provocatively Mahlerian.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many essays in this space have griped that today\u2019s conductors are seldom bona fide \u201cmusic directors.\u201d Colorado Mahlerfest is curated by a gifted conductor who is also a writer, a thinker, and an artistic administrator: Kenneth Woods, who (though American) serves as principal conductor and music director of the English Symphony Orchestra in Worcester, UK.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2026, the Mahlerfest topic will be \u201cMahler the Man\u201d and the festival events will include a professional staging of my play&nbsp;<em>The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York<\/em>&nbsp;(a spin-off from my&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.josephhorowitz.com\/the-marriage\">recent novel<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;with the same title).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read more about Colorado Mahlerfest&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/05\/boulders-36th-mahlerfest-a-communal-labor-of-love.html\">here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You will find the complete 2024 festival schedule for this May&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1CRY8iiDxhop1iaj9taL8q2hWnxZ-O-tj\/view\">here<\/a><\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Writing in&nbsp;The American Scholar, Sudip Bose said of David Taylor playing Schubert\u2019s \u201cDer Doppelg\u00e4nger\u201d: \u201cNot in my wildest imaginings could I have envisioned such revelatory and shocking interpretations. . . . The pathos was unrelenting, almost too much to bear. . . . Taylor\u2019s Schubert performances have been haunting me ever since. I cannot get [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Mw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3008"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3041,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3008\/revisions\/3041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}